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Alcatraz on the Hill: The Rise and Afterlife of Trieste's Rozzol Melara

The courtyard at Rozzol Melara measures two hundred meters on each side, which makes it larger than any square in Trieste. Two L-shaped blocks of exposed concrete enclose it, one of them twice the height of the other, climbing from seven to fifteen stories as the ridge falls away toward the gulf four kilometers below. Concrete pylons spaced every fifteen meters carry the blocks down to a slope they never quite touch, opening porticoes deep enough to walk through, and above them the facades resolve into loggias at the scale of a single room. Seen from the coastal road, none of that is legible; one can only see a gray line drawn across the hills.